Synopsis: Measurement of Penile and Clitoral Sizes in Post-Neonatal Infants

Abstract

When the appearance of a child’s genitalia differs from the anatomical description above, with difficulty in assigning gender, the genital is described as a disorder of sex differentiation (DSD). Late diagnosis of DSD in the developing world is frequently due to delayed presentation arising from non-recognition and inhibition from stigma. This is even worse when close to half of children are born in hospitals. This could be due to a lack of thorough external genitalia examination at birth that could have detected subtle aberrations in genital anatomy or a lack of knowledge about what genital sizes may constitute an abnormality. Early diagnosis of micropenis, clitoromegaly or other forms of DSD is important, since it may be a pointer to an underlying serious or life-threatening hormonal disorder.